Sage Fire Reviews

Alien Dreams

Being a Provisional God

When does a god get tired? How does he pick a replacement? Is he cyclic like the India Indian Brahmas or is he self fulfilling, and all knowledgeable like the Christians? Captain Latimore never bothered to ask these tough questions.  He probably never even thought he needed to. But maybe its time he tried.

Synopsis: 

Captain Latimore and his crew are sent to find a missing survey crew.  What he finds is a nearly insane survey Captain and dead bodies.  All carrying mysterious tesseract cubes.

Once the cubes are in the possession of his crew, their demeanor also changes.  Could it be an influence from the cubes?  Or is it some outside interference?

When the strange alien dreams where everyone has different bodies and attitudes strikes them all, it is only Latimore hidden schizophrenia which saves them.  But for how long?  And what motive do the Aliens have?

Imagine the shock within Captain Latimore when he discovers they want to fight God and he is their candidate for a replacement.  To find out if he succeeds, you need to read the book.

Impression: 

This book is hard to pick up and read.  With minor spattering of romance, action, and suspense; even the most ardent of Rosenman reading fans may wonder when the book is going to start.

Mark no qualms; the plot of Man becomes God, has been done quite a number of times, becoming nearly run of the mill. Mis-queuing on this plot only puts the author in the company of such legendary penmen as Phillip Jose Farmer and Robert Heinlein.  But it does exclude an author from joining those who succeeded, like Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Silverberg, or Philip K. Dick.  The reader will have to decide which camp Rosenman belongs in.

The  theme of Man  overcomes Alien  by becoming an Alien is nearly as overused as the plot. When it succeeds, like the visa credit card commercial, it is priceless.  But that doesn't happen here.  In this book, the alien creatures are so different in build and thought, the reader is left feeling he has run into a Disney Anthropomorphism when the hero pupates from human to alien.

Rosenman deserves far better allocades and applause than this book provides to him.  Even as an technical author,  one wonders what the Interest Analysis Graph shows,  and what the Story Value Rating is; because embarrassingly, this book is a train running without tracks.

I have enjoyed many of Rosenman's writings in the past, but for the reasons above, I found I could not enjoy this book, having to force myself to read it.  I feel the author could do a lot better.  I give this book 4 campfires.

RATING:  4 Campfires

Citations:

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Title & length: 

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Comparable publications:

• More Stately Mansions
• Beyond Those Distant Stars
• Speaker of the Shakk

Targeted readership:

All readers over the age of 12.  Slight sexual connotations, but nothing beyond acceptable general newspaper publication.  I give it 1 candle flame.

1 Flames for sexual content.

Author's credentials:

John B. Rosenman is an English professor at Norfolk State University in Virginia. His first novel, The Best Laugh Last, won Treacle Press’s First Novel Award and was published in 1980 and 1981. More Stately Mansions: The Selected Works of John B. Rosenman, was published by Dark Regions Press in 1999.  Beyond Those Distant Stars (Novel Books, Inc.) appeared in 2003. Mundania Press published Speaker of the Shakk and Beyond Those Distant Stars in 2007. Drollerie Press published the e-book of Alien Dreams in 2007, with the trade paperback scheduled for 2008.

Rosenman has also published 300+ short stories in places such as Weird Tales, Starshore, Cemetery Dance, The Age of Wonders, Hot Blood, Whitley Strieber’s Aliens, and Treachery and Treason.

A past Chairman of the Board of HWA (Horror Writers Association), Rosenman has also published articles on censorship and served as editor of several magazines, including Dark Regions and Horror Magazine. At Norfolk State University, he teaches literature, composition, and creative writing courses, including a course in writing science fiction and fantasy. He has also been a member of a productive writer’s group for nearly twenty years and credits many of his novel and short story sales to them. In 2006 he edited a textbook, Introduction to Literature, which is used for English 207 World Literature courses at Norfolk State. Rosenman writes a monthly blog on writing at Storytellers Unplugged, a community of thirty writers.

Reviewer & reviewer credentials:

MD Johnson is a mountain northwest regional -- freelance author, living in Payette, Idaho.

His writing interests include poetry, romance, westerns, science fiction, travel, and history. His work has appeared in a diverse range of publications including True Romance and Ballyhoo Stories.

In 2007 he bacme an EPIC author and he has republished the 1935 western classic historical novel, “The Bitterroot Trail” as the anthologist. http://thebitterroottrail.pencraft.biz 

Mr. Johnson also runs a book review web site, Sage Fire Reviews, http://sagefire.pencraft.biz . Mr Johnson specializes in small press editions which include multi-format e-books in the genres above. In early 2008, Mr. Johnson was nominated and accepted membership into the National Book Critics Circle.

If you have a book or an ARC, you would like Mr. Johnson to review, please address your questions to him at queries@pencraft.biz.

All work © 2008, MD Johnson, all rights reserved.